Why Gen Y Will Not Have a Career
Posted on March 28th, 2012
Do you think Gen Y is the greatest thing since Dance-Dance Revolution?
Or do you think Gen Y is like a Backstreet Boys comeback tour – lots of sparkle without much substance?
Wherever you fall on the I Heart Gen Y scale, one way or another there’s no escaping us.
Gen Y will be the shopkeepers of culture, work, religion, and politics before you can say “social-network-with-a-dash-of-Obama “.
However, as Gen Y/Millennials begin sitting at the “big persons table,” I don’t think Gen Y will necessarily have a career to go with it.
Let me explain.
- Photo by Erin Leigh McConnell
Bye-Bye Career
A career is defined as an “occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.”
Yeah, I don’t think a majority of Millennials will have them one of these. Place that definition on a wooden floating vessel and push it out to sea.
In the Pew Research Center’s recent study: Young, Underemployed and Optimistic, the study states that “among all 18- to 34-year-olds, only 30% consider their current job a career.”
I don’t see that number dramatically increasing as we grow up.
3 Reasons Why Gen Y Will Not Have a Career
1. Career Feels Stifling
There is a permanence to the word career that I’m not sure Gen Y is comfortable with.
Career sounds stuffy and inescapable like getting lost in the back of your Aunt Martha’s closet.
Millennials won’t last long working in an office-assembly-line, repeating the same task over and over and over and over again. Gen Y’s idea of professional success isn’t sticking out the life-sucking job just so they can be promoted deeper into the job they already hate. Gen Y needs the space to breathe and create.
2. Gen Y is a Jack-of-All-Trades Generation
Gen Y has spent their lives dabbling. Being involved. Leading. Learning. Spreading ourselves thin. All the while, collecting various talents that weave together to form something unique and needed.
Millennials have too many interests and too little attention spans to focus on one thing for too long.
3. Gen Y’s Career Path Will Be More Lateral Than Vertical
The world is flat now with the ability to work anywhere, on anything, at anytime.
Gen Y won’t climb the ladder. Gen Y will swim from island to island, picking up necessary survival skills at each destination.
Gen Y’s professional path won’t always make sense, but their destination will.
What do you think about Gen Y’s career?
Photo Credit: Erin Leigh McConnell – Creative Commons
I couldn’t agree with you more, Paul. It’s funny, because when I was in corporate, baby boomers complained about the lack of commitment from GenY, and now I’m coaching many of them who want the same professional freedom! Go figure…
Awesome insight Isha. Thank you. The old butt in a chair just to say it’s there mentality just doesn’t make as much in today’s working environment. Organizations that encourage the lateral movement and spark creativity are the ones that will grow and retain Gen Y.
Paul – I completely agree with you! The connotation that comes with the word “career” flies in the face of everything that Gen Y strives for – freedom, choice, meritocracy, and so on. I see the trend continuing until careers are something that is phased out completely.
People will choose to work and have a job, or they will choose to do what they love – and reserve the right to change their minds! With all of the opportunity out there to create your own balance and work-life, what has been so successful for bigger companies in the past, will be their biggest opponent in the talent wars. Great article!
Thanks Melissa! “Meritocracy” – Love that word. Great insight.
WRONG! Gen Y adults will have careers and will move up the career ladder. We didn’t go to college for four years plus graduate school to get stuck in a job we hate. We are the most optimistic group when it comes to our futures. Things will get better for us.